Leading man David Wenham talks to lawyer, novelist and screenwriter Chris Nyst about what counts: crime, grime and making a dime.
When I first sat down with director, Jonathan Teplitzky, to talk about the casting of our crime flick
Gettin’ Square, he already had one name pencilled in. Jonathan announced with absolute conviction that David Wenham would bring something special to the role of the hapless junkie, Johnny Spitieri. Frankly, I had my doubts. Of course I knew of the celebrated, award-winning actor, whose handsome Diver Dan in
SeaChange had female television audiences swooning, but somehow I couldn’t imagine the man once dubbed “Australia’s sexiest man alive” fitting into junky Johnny’s leopard-skin wedgie and rubber thongs. I was soon to learn how very wrong I was.
It’s not until you spend some time in the company of the affable and unassuming David Wenham that you discover the empathy and intelligence that fire his rare talent, allowing him to tap into the essence of characters as diverse as the dark and menacing tribal leader of
The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1997),
Molokai’s (Paul Cox, 1998) pious Father Damien and
Gettin’ Square’s (Jonathan Teplilzky, 2003) disarmingly conniving Johnny Spit.
CHRIS I wanted to talk a little bit about your background. You’re a Marrickville boy?
DAVID Correct.
CHRIS Marrickvilie’s the kind of working class suburb that explains many things I didn’t know earlier on about you. I don’t think I’ve ever revealed this to you hut with
Gettin’ Square (2003), the director Jonathan Teplitzky right from go said the Johnny “Spit” Spitieri part, is you. He said, “David will do a great job with this.” And immediately I thought of
SeaChange and “Australia’s sexiest man alive”. I thought, “Shit, that’s not Johnny Spitieri.” But when you did your shtick the first time, it was just so obvious you were the character and everybody was wrapped. The interesting thing for me was where you found the characters like Johnny Spitieri?
DAVID I grew up in the inner western suburbs of Sydney which is Marrickville. And when I went to drama school I actually studied in the outer western suburbs of Sydney at a place called Theatre Nepean, which I don’t think exists anymore. Then I lived not too far from Kings Cross. From all those different areas. I’ve come across the most extraordinary people that are obviously not dissimilar from the characters that you represent on nearly a day-to-day basis in Queensland.
I came across a guy the other day on Darlinghurst Road who came up to me and said, “Would you be in my rock opera?” He’s this guy who lives pretty much on the streets in Kings Cross, who’s written this rock opera. He said to me, “You know what? I’ve spent most of my time up and down this street and people keep saying, “David Wenham stole you for
Gettin’ Square!” I’d never come across this guy before.
CHRIS I wrote a book years ago called
Top This. It was my first hook and it’s the lawyer’s life story basically. It’s all about pre-Fitzgerald enquiry Queensland and the tough old cops who used to scare the shit out of me when I was a young boy, that whole corruption thing. And for years afterwards, I would get calls from people, ex-coppers mainly, who’d say, “Read the book, loved the book. I see you put so and so in the book, you wrote about so and so.” I’d say, “Yeah, yeah,” not really knowing who they were talking about. But it was exactly the same experience you had on Darlinghurst Rd. People recognise a character type.
DAVID The interesting thing about those characters us well is I spent a lot of time before we started shooting looking around that Kings Cross area. I propped myself on a little bench and I just watched people. And some of the behaviour of the characters up there was actually so extreme that I didn’t feel as though I could take on their idiosyncrasies cause I thought they were potentially too much, even for Spitieri. So what we eventually ended up with was a slightly toned-down affair of a lot of the stuff I see up at the Cross regularly.
CHRIS When I saw
The Boys, it was actually after we’d done
Gettin’ Square. It was interesting that you had strains of the same characters. One really portrayed The Boys as a patriarchal family going nowhere. It was a really strong sense of frustration, hopelessness. And the Spitieri character has a similar type of background and character. I was struck by the way you were able to bring those different qualities. I’d like lo say it’s in the writing, but you were also able to bring those differences of qualities to both of those characters and accentuate them.
DAVID I must say I give the greatest credit to the writing for that is the key for the characters and a way into the piece. If it’s not there, it’s very hard to fabricate.
CHRIS In terms of preparing for roles generally, is there any formula for you?
DAVID No, it’s literally on a project-by-project basis. Some necessitate a great deal of research. They might be real characters. I did a film once called
Molokai which is the story of a Belgian priest who went to Hawaii to work with leprosy patients. And this guy is the Belgian national hero and he’s also the most famous person who’s ever set foot on a Hawaiian island. So I had to make sure I was going to be as close as possible to people’s ideas and perceptions of that particular character as possible. Then it goes to the other extreme where my imagination is the limit for characters.
CHRIS So with a
Molokai-type of role, do you jump into the books?
DAVID Yeah, that’s the first port of call always and there was quite a lot written on him. There’s museums dedicated to Father Damien. There’s so much source material, photographs and what not. It’s obviously a tremendous help for an actor but it can often be a bit of a burden too, cause people really know this character, to start with better than you.
CHRIS I don’t know whether it’s intentionally but it seems you’re moving towards a character-type role direction. Is that something that you perceive or not?
DAVID Not consciously, no. I try to mix it up a little bit. When I graduated from acting school many years ago, I saw myself more as a character actor than a leading man and I sort of got railroaded somewhere along the way and I ended up playing some leading characters which was absolutely terrific.
CHRIS That brings me to this whole star syndrome subject and the leading man star role. Is that something that you...?
DAVID It’s not something I’ve ever really craved. I’ve never seen myself like that. But especially doing
Lord Of The Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson,. 2001-2003), it does open up doors. That was an incredible project to be involved in and it’s something I’ll always treasure. And as they say, it opens doors.
CHRIS What’s been the advantage of that sort of project? There’s obviously the financial benefits?
DAVID I wish.
CHRIS (laughs) But in terms of just being involved, just in terms of the actual project itself?
DAVID I think for all of us involved, as soon as we arrived in New Zealand, we knew this was a one-off project. Certainly, being involved in the film adaptation of Tolkien’s
LOTR was special enough. The book, I think, is the second biggest selling book alter the Bible. And then to go into Peter Jackson’s studios in Wellington und see the amount of work and passion and sweat that had been put into the project before any of the actors arrived, was truly overwhelming. The attention to detail involved in the production, I don’t know if it’ll ever be surpassed.
CHRIS The thing that interested me to hear, from an actor’s point of view, is the extent to which you are actually playing out the role?
DAVID I think it was very different to big-budget fantasy-type films in so far as, in my role; I worked on real sets the whole time. The locations and sets had actually been physically built. So I didn’t really have to suspend my belief. I was through the Great Hall; I was actually riding a horse with a couple of hundred other horsemen on the fields of Middle Earth. You were actually there; it wasn’t as I’d spend day after day in front of a blue screen, which can occur on those films. That’s not to say there wasn’t blue screen work because there was, but the majority of it I was working with real actors on real sets. So New Zealand became Middle Earth; it was a real happening thing.
CHRIS Well let’s go from the fantasy to the reality. I wanted to ask you about the power film has to influence reality, culture und politics. For example, I’m doing a screenplay at the moment for a mini-series based on my first book, about the pre-Fitzgerald era in Queensland. I’d like to think these sort of pieces will have a real influence on people’s attitudes. It doesn’t seem very often that we can influence attitudes. To what extent do you think that filmmakers, and I’m including actors, have a role here?
DAVID I think we should always be responsible in what we’re doing.
CHRIS How did you feel going into
The Boys, for example? That’s a pretty heavy piece.
DAVID It certainly was a heavy piece but I think the great thing and the great achievement about both the play and the film is it didn’t moralise. It didn’t take sides and it didn’t profit from any solutions or any answers. It just presented those characters in those situations and then allowed people to discuss it. And that certainly happened; it created a huge amount of discussion, which I think is a terrific thing.
CHRIS I had the interesting experience of going to the United Nations in Geneva to follow up some human right issues coming out of China. I was discussing various ways to change things... if you look at films like
Seven Years in Tibet (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1997) and the way that film raised awareness... And the movie called
Missing (Costa Gavras, 1982) touched on the coup in Chile. I remember at the time, it was a subject I knew nothing at all about, but this little film brought into the conscience of people who otherwise would never have noticed the events in Chile. I think film is enormously influential.
DAVID Absolutely. I think we’re involved in an incredibly powerful medium of expression and communication. Certainly with film and definitely with television.
Look at Mike Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Who would have thought a film could potentially influence the outcome of an American presidential election?
From here.
